David Wise

David Wise was a consultant physician in Dartford, Kent. He was born in Brixton, London, the son of Cuthbert Edward Wise and Phyllis Decima Wise née Dixon, who were both general practitioners. David’s brother, Peter Wise, also became a GP. David Wise was educated at Dulwich and the Craig preparatory schools and then Oundle. He went on to study medicine at St John’s College, Cambridge, and St Thomas’ Hospital Medical School.

He was a registrar at St Thomas’ in 1957, and then became a senior registrar at Hillingdon Hospital (from 1958 to 1962). While at St Thomas’, David misdiagnosed a patient as having angiokeratoma corporis diffusum, a disease he had only read about. This became the subject of his MD thesis in 1960 and led to a fellowship at Johns Hopkins (from 1962 to 1963) under Victor McKusick [Munk’s Roll, Vol.XII, web]. He returned to the UK as a senior registrar at the Royal Free Hospital, where he stayed until 1965.

From 1965 to 1969 he was a senior physician to the government of Qatar. He then became a consultant physician at Dartford District Hospital in Kent. He had always aimed at finding a non-teaching consultant post.

Outside medicine, he was passionate about natural history and the local history of Crosthwaite, in Cumbria, where he had a house. In 1990 he had a TIA and, a year later, a major stroke. He was hospitalised for nine months, but with considerable determination managed to regain his mobility. However, he gradually became weaker. He was nursed at home, and died from bronchopneumonia. He was survived by his wife, Patricia (née Hindley), whom he had married in 1972, and their son (Daniel) and daughter (Sarah).